Overview

The Gallaudet Strategic Plan 2010-2015 was approved by the Board of Trustees in May 2009. Preliminary implementation of the strategic plan began in the gall of 2009 with full implementation beginning in the Spring of 2010.

Message from the President

The Gallaudet Strategic Plan 2010-2015 (GSP) provides the university community a roadmap for the next five years. This strategic plan re-affirms our core values in its mission statement, sets forth a bold new vision with clearly articulated guiding principles, and sets forth five critical goals for ensuring a university of excellence for future generations of students.

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The GSP is the product of more than 18 months of hard work by faculty, staff, students, alumni, and key stakeholders. The Gallaudet Board of Trustees has been actively engaged in guiding and reveiwing the process and the plan. This partnership between the Board of Trustees, the administration, and the inclusive Gallaudet community establishes a strong foundation for the next five years. As we enter the implementation of the new Strategic Plan, I am enthusiastically committed to ensuring the broadest possible participation and ownership by members of our diverse community. I am committed to providing hands on leadership, working with key university officers, to ensure that we achieve these vitally important goals and hold each accountable for their successful implementation. I am confident that working together, harnessing our intellectual capacity and enormous passion for Gallaudet, that we can realize the promise of this bold vision for a bright future.

T. Alan Hurwitz President

Provost's Message

Greetings!

As chief academic officer of Gallaudet University, I am charged with planning and implementing Goals A and B of the Gallaudet Strategic Plan. Goal A is to "grow Gallaudet's enrollment of full-time undergraduates, full- and part-time graduate students, and continuing education students to 3,000 by 2015." Goal B is to "increase Gallaudet's six-year undergraduate graduation rate to 50 percent by 2015."

We also have a significant role in Goal D: "By 2015, refine a core set of undergraduate and graduate programs that are aligned with the institutional mission and vision, leverage Gallaudet's many strengths, and best position students for career success", and Goal E: "Establish Gallaudet as the epicenter of research, development and outreach leading to advancements in knowledge and practice for deaf and hard of hearing people and all humanity."

These are ambitious goals, but they are also achievable ones. The Gallaudet Strategic Plan is consistent with the singular long-term goal of attracting the best and brightest students and retaining them at Gallaudet until graduation. Let me highlight just a few of our initiatives.

We have raised our undergraduate admissions standards. Our outcomes-based undergraduate General Studies Program, consistent with our mission statement, "prepares our students for career opportunities in a highly competitive, technological, and rapidly changing world."

Our academic rigor has increased markedly. With this, we have made sure that we provide students with the support they need through supplemental instruction, tutoring, intentional and purposeful intervention with at-risk students, professional and paraprofessional advising, and more. We have created preparation programs in health care, law, and business, and are working to create one in architecture, to open more doors for deaf and hard of hearing students in these professions.

Our co-curricular and extracurricular programs, including athletics, are increasingly attractive and competitive.

We have opened a new, state of the art living and learning residence hall, and are converting three of the historic houses on Faculty Row to student residences. We have expanded our faculty-in-residence program to provide greater opportunities for collegiality and academic support.

Our master's and doctoral programs continue to be competitive and highly regarded in their disciplines. Our continuing studies program offers certificate and degree programs in collaboration with academic departments and schools.

An adult degree program provides opportunities for working deaf and hard of hearing adults to obtain their undergraduate degrees through a hybrid of course offerings and other methods of delivery. We also offer hybrid graduate degree programs, notably a master's degree in Sign Language Education, a master's degree program in public administration, a doctoral degree program in Education-Critical Studies in the Education of Deaf Learners, and a doctoral degree program in Interpretation.

Research opportunities abound for both undergraduate and graduate students. Our faculty guides discipline-specific research. Students in the undergraduate Honors Program conduct basic and applied research for their honors capstone projects, and small grant funding is made available to them. Our sponsored research centers include a National Science Foundation Science of Learning Center on Visual Language and Visual Learning, a Brain and Language Lab, a Molecular Genetics Laboratory, and two Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers, one for Technology Access and one for Hearing Enhancement. We also conduct research on the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Ultimately, everyone who works and studies in the Division of Academic Affairs is a part of what President Hurwitz calls "the promise of this bold vision for a bright future."

Sincerely,

Carol J. Erting Provost, Academic Affairs

Vice President's Message

The Division of administration and finance has a very important role in our successfully implementing the Gallaudet Strategic Plan (GSP). For this reason, President Hurwitz has asked me to be responsible for one of the five goal areas - Goal C - diversifying revenues and improving our cost efficiencies. Goal C is vital to the overall financial well-being of the university and directly supports the FY 2010 priorities in Goals A and B (recruitment, retention and graduation) as well as strategies in Goal D (academic programs) and Goal E (research and outreach).

Fred Weiner will be assisting me with coordination of the GSP Goal C and the coordination with the other Goal areas under Provost Weiner. During the coming weeks Fred and I will be setting up implementation teams for the strategies and action plans under Goal C. Some of these teams are already underway such as the 6th street development project. These teams will provide faculty and staff an opportunity to be involved with the implementation of the Goal C strategies and action plans.

If you have any ideas or questions about the strategies and action plans under Goal C, please feel free to contact Fred Weiner or me. On the Administration and Finance web pages you can review the implementation plan, including the teams that we will be setting up to involve people in the process. You can also view a complete description of Goal C and strategies and action plans that support this goal area.

I look forward to working with the Gallaudet community to achieve these important goals.